In this week’s edition of Beyond the Headlines, Peter Dykstra joins Bobby Bascomb to discuss calls for climate change to be a centerpiece topic in the upcoming Presidential debates. This week’s segment also covers the EPA announcement that the agency would shift focus away from climate change, and towards “community cleanups”. Finally, looking back through history, the pair discuss the 30th anniversary of the landmark book Dumping in Dixie by “the father of environmental justice,” Prof. Robert Bullard.

Islands are famously home to a huge diversity of animals found nowhere else on Earth. In New Zealand, an edemic and peculiar bird called the Kakapo is making a comeback. BirdNote’s Michael Stein reports on this one-of-a-kind big bird.

Research now shows that a landmark program aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic has helped lead to healthier kids. States that participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, also known as RGGI, have collectively cut carbon and fine particulate emissions from the power sector, leading to cleaner air overall and fewer cases of asthma, autism, and preterm birth. Dr. Frederica Perera is the Founding Director of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health and lead author of the new study, and joins Living on Earth’s Jenni Doering to discuss.

In California, Oregon and Washington, the 2020 fire season is one for the record books, with millions of acres burned and many thousands of people displaced. Fires are inevitable in much of the West due to the region’s ecology, but devasting megafires aren’t, according to Timothy Ingalsbee, founding director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE). He joins Living on Earth’s Jenni Doering to discuss how fire management can keep megafires from erupting and keep communities safe.

Clean water is a basic human right, according to the United Nations. Yet for millions of Americans, it can still be expensive and hard to come by. Living on Earth’s Bobby Bascomb speaks with Nina Lakhani, an environment reporter at the Guardian, which recently launched a year-long project investigating water inequities in the US.

Hurricane Laura hit the Gulf Coast as a Category 4 at the end of August 2020, but the impact of the killer hurricane was less deadly than many had feared, in part due to the buffer provided by coastal wetlands. Living on Earth's Aynsley O'Neill reports.

“Hotshot” crews perform some of the most physically demanding and dangerous firefighting work, and have long been male-dominated. Freelance journalist Amanda Monthei captured the stories of some of the first women hotshots for Outside Magazine. She’s worked on a hotshot crew herself, and spoke with Living on Earth’s Bobby Bascomb about the generational link she found between her experience and theirs.